^ Are they, though, or are we just so used to seeing them freely transposed that we've come to accept it as natural?

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Well, it's not as if Shakespeare himself didn't update the settings of his own plays. "The clock hath stricken three?" They didn't have clocks that struck the hour in Ancient Rome! His portrayals of historical times and places were generally more like the world he and his audience lived in.

Well, Shakespeare in modern settings disturbs me (I REALLY like period costume pieces!), but Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Joss is Joss, so I'm sure it'll be great.

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Shakespeare's works are universal.. they're not period victorian plays but about the human condition in general and we basically struggle with the same emotions and problems people have been for centuries and millennia.

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Blah blah blah. We like what we like. I prefer it one way, you have no preference. IDIC. I don't need a lecture every time I express an opinion..

^ Are they, though, or are we just so used to seeing them freely transposed that we've come to accept it as natural?

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Well, it's not as if Shakespeare himself didn't update the settings of his own plays. "The clock hath stricken three?" They didn't have clocks that struck the hour in Ancient Rome! His portrayals of historical times and places were generally more like the world he and his audience lived in.

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Also a good point. And I fully acknowledge that even his historical plays were (as far as I know) performed in contemporary clothing.

I was just talking to my wife about this tiny controversy. She's a very big fan of the costume drama (and has created period costumes for local theater). Her take is "There are so few movies set in that time period as it is, why pass up a good excuse to wear all those neat clothes?"

Well, Shakespeare in modern settings disturbs me (I REALLY like period costume pieces!), but Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Joss is Joss, so I'm sure it'll be great.

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Shakespeare's works are universal.. they're not period victorian plays but about the human condition in general and we basically struggle with the same emotions and problems people have been for centuries and millennia.

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Blah blah blah. We like what we like. I prefer it one way, you have no preference. IDIC. I don't need a lecture every time I express an opinion..

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What? I'm not allowed to challenge your opinion on a public discussion board?

Well, it's not as if Shakespeare himself didn't update the settings of his own plays. "The clock hath stricken three?" They didn't have clocks that struck the hour in Ancient Rome! His portrayals of historical times and places were generally more like the world he and his audience lived in.

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I believe the Romans had clepsydra (water clocks) that could strike the hour.

This one was announced quite a while ago actually, and I've been looking forward to it for a while. I loved Kenneth Brannagh's adaption of Much Ado... and I feel that Whedon's sense of humor is just right for a Shakespeare play. Should be good.

On the question of period appropriateness, was Shakespeare indifferent, or ignorant? Was Cleopatra dressed in kirtle and wimple because it didn't matter or because he didn't know any better? Perhaps the answer was written on the sands of the seacoast of Bohemia, washed away by the tides, never to be known.

I'm really not so sure that Shakespeare always benefits from its loose attachment to place and time. After all, since real people are always specific to their place and time, ignoring that tends to falsify them. For instance, popular as Antony and Cleopatra seems to be, Cleopatra really seems to be some weird amalgam of King James' resentments of women (such as his mother Mary Queen of Scots or his predecessor Elizabeth I) and vamp that never carried any conviction to my eyes and ears.

For another example, consider Othello. In Shakespeare's time, the discovery of the world was in full swing. You know, Hakluyt's Voyages, etc. In that context, Othello's pompous stories from Latin authors about strange marvels, listened to open-eyed by the gullible Rosalind put a very different complexion on Othello's doubts about her. Abstracting from the setting falsifies the characters.

Nor do all aspects of Shakespeare really survive translation. Richard III really doesn't translate into thirties Fascism. It's about glorifying the Tudors by blackening their predecessor. The vision at Banquo's feast is meaningless to us. A woman's statue coming to life (I've forgotten if that's Cymbeline or A Winter's Tale) had resonances that simply do not apply today. I always found it remarkable that people so blithely ignored the basic premise of Lear that it is a cosmic tragedy if the King doesn't rule.

They should. I mean, the genres are completely different and the audience for "The Avengers" is typically not the same audience who would go see a low-budget, independent Shakespearean film. But anyone with half a brain would try to pimp out Joss Whedon's connection to "The Avengers" if it means few more people go see the film out of curiosity.

They should. I mean, the genres are completely different and the audience for "The Avengers" is typically not the same audience who would go see a low-budget, independent Shakespearean film. But anyone with half a brain would try to pimp out Joss Whedon's connection to "The Avengers" if it means few more people go see the film out of curiosity.

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Don't forget to stay through the closing credits for the bonus scene where Benedick and Beatrice go out for shwarma, only to be accosted by Samuel L. Jackson.

"Get me Macbeth!"

And watch for Stan Lee's cameo as an elderly W. Shakespeare. "I say to you . . . Excelsior!"

On the question of period appropriateness, was Shakespeare indifferent, or ignorant? Was Cleopatra dressed in kirtle and wimple because it didn't matter or because he didn't know any better?

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Bit of both. The knowledge base Shakespeare and his contemporarenous Elizabethan playwrights had to draw on was a lot narrower than our own, but he never let the stated facts of a story get in the way of whatever he'd prefer to do.

A woman's statue coming to life (I've forgotten if that's Cymbeline or A Winter's Tale) had resonances that simply do not apply today. .

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A Winter's Tale, as I recall.

I also have dim memories of an old Poul Anderson novel set in an alternate universe in which all of Shakespeare's plays were historically accurate. Bohemia has a coast, there were clocks in ancient Rome, Prospero and Miranda are real people, etc. I think the title was A Midsummer Tempest.

And I still have fond memories of a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that was set in a 1950's high school, complete with period music.

"Why must I be a teenager in love?" actually fit the plot rather well!

I also have dim memories of an old Poul Anderson novel set in an alternate universe in which all of Shakespeare's plays were historically accurate. Bohemia has a coast, there were clocks in ancient Rome, Prospero and Miranda are real people, etc. I think the title was A Midsummer Tempest.

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Exactly. A 1974 book from Del Rey. Actually it involves several alternate universes and a cross-dimensional tavern, but the Shakespearean one is one of the main ones. And most of the inhabitants of that dimension speak in iambic pentameter.